MOTUS: New Sport Tourer built in Alabama

I agree with these guys. This engine would be great in a spec racing series. It would also be bad-ass in a lightweight sports car like a Caterham 7.

Are you fucking shitting me?

Au contraire mes amis. I serially own bmw's and I'm interested in this.

Oh, NOW you did it !

To be perfectly honest, I have to like the bike first (in my case a k1200r), but if all that unnecessary but great crap is available -- got to have it! If I love the Motus and it doesn't come with all that fun and unnecessary crap -- fuck, I'll take it. Would love to be able to by a US bike. That I liked.

It appears the cylinders and heads are a common casting. It seems unusual today but the old Drake Offenhauser engines were done that way.

The parting line you can see in the photo is the interface between the heads and the block. The crankcase and cylinders are one piece and the heads are another. Here's a nice write up.

It's really hard to tell isn't it. In that photo it looks like the cylinder bores are in the upper crankcase casting and the pistons are not all the way installed in the bore. The head is certainly thick though.

I saw the writeup in Hot Rod magazine at a friend's place and looked for the issue on the stands but missed it. Thanks for posting the link to it. That's one of the few magazines left that actually takes things apart and understands what they're doing when they do.

Here's the pic we needed that shows all.

And this one of the head.

These look a little scary to me. I wonder about the durability of pistons with skirts that short.

Don't EVER pull apart a modern liter bike than.

The newer super sports with almost universally have stripper style short skirts, they have to do something to keep the mass down so the the pistons don't tear the ends off of the rods. While the dimensions on this motor are more conservative than a say an R1 or S1000RR (that are significantly more over-square) I wouldn't worry to much about it. K-Tech has a reputation for building bullet proof race machinery. Check out the endurance cars they build motors for and check how many failures those monsters have.

Pretty standard for hi-po engines these days.

As you can tell, I haven't had anything very new apart. I don't really want to either. I'd rather just ride these days.

What is the purpose of the cut away cylinder?

They plugged the open ends of the cooling jacket, so I assume this was going to be assembled into a running engine. But what would you need that kind of access to a cylinder/piston for?

you put your weed in there.

hahahahhahahaha

Here's the caption that goes with the photo.

Hot Rod just had an article about a junkyard LS that they turbo'ed to about 26 psi of boost on the stock bottom end and reciprocating assembly. Stock cast crank and pistons. They wrung out about 1300 horsepower from 4.8 liters. It survived 60 pulls on the dyno and kept going. Remember that the Motus is based on the LS. I've seen a few references to the V-4 as a racing engine for four wheel vehicles. It's be a great dirt track or formula car engine.

LOL!

they plugged it like that to aid in machining the cut-away without getting any chatter in the cut.